


Stitches: Summer

by heartdontfailmenow



Series: Stitches [1]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, shardsverse, snow sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25443061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartdontfailmenow/pseuds/heartdontfailmenow
Summary: Elsa finds her and Anna's childhood dolls.
Relationships: Anna & Elsa (Disney), Elsa (Disney)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Stitches [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842841
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first tumblr fic ever, and now I've decided to post it here :) Alarik and Neta are OCs belonging to ShardsofArendelle

Making her doll was easy.

A wave of her hand, and she had a perfect replica of her ice dress. It took her a few seconds to make a single braid for the little doll’s yellow hair.

Right over left, left over right, right over left, a single snowflake at the end

Anna’s doll was another matter.

She knew the basics of sewing, of course, as most young ladies did. It was quiet, soothing work. One stitch. Two stitch. Pull. Knot. Repeat. Control. Always in control.

____________________________________

The dolls were threadbare when she found them on the side of the staircase. The Anna doll’s button eyes were loose. The arms of the Elsa doll needed stuffing. But they were still as soft as ever. They looked well loved.

Elsa just wished she had been there to see it happen.

____________________________________

Embroidering the rosemaling was her favorite. They matched the gardens outside, the bright colors of the thread stood out against the inky black bodice, winding leaves of emerald green with tiny, tiny pink flowers.

_Elsa was seven when Mama taught her how to do the rose embroidery, the rosesaum._

_Thursday afternoons, shortly before tea, were spent either in her mother’s study or, when it was warm outside, her personal garden, learning the different stitches required in embroidering rose patterns, so similar to the rosemaling she saw, painted on just about everything, from the tapestries in the Great Hall to the wagons on their summer picnic trips to the countryside. When Elsa couldn’t think of a pattern or a color, all she had to do was look around. Roses, lillies, and crocuses, her favorite, flowers she didn’t even know the names of, filled the garden with a sweet fragrance that made Elsa forget the heat and feel as if it were still springtime._

_The two of them usually just sat together, stitching quietly, Mama humming an old lullaby every now and then. Neither of them ever minded the silence._

_“Mama? ”_

_Her mother looked up from the cape she was stitching and smiled._

_“Why can’t Anna sew with me?”_

_Her Mama paused for a moment, setting the cape on her lap . “She’s a bit too young to be handling a needle. You know how excited your sister gets. But when she’s older, you can teach her.”_

_“What if she hurts herself? ” Elsa asked, eyes wide. She remembered when she herself first pricked her finger, a tiny drop of blood staining the pure whiteness of a stocking . Mama had kissed her cold finger even though Elsa had barely felt any pain._

_Mama smoothed Elsa’s hair away from her face. “You’ll protect her from doing it too much. And when she does,” she said, lifting her chin up, “you can always kiss it better. “_

_Elsa was fourteen when she received her first letter from a suitor ._

_Elsa only ever sewed in her mother’s study now, and sat on the chair across her mother’s , hands trembling, but the stitches she made on the blanket were as neat as ever._

_“You don’t have to reply to the Duke’s son. You know that. Your papa is drafting a reply right now.” She let herself give Elsa a wry smile, “Lord knows your father knows what a letter rejecting a suitor looks like.”_

_“But they’re our closest trade partners, and the trade summit is in two weeks, and I have a duty to-”_

_“Sweetheart” , Mama said, reaching out to stroke her hair, before Elsa jerked away involuntarily. She withdrew her hand and continued, “ Your duty isn’t to entertain every man who asks to court you in the future. ”_

_“But Mama, he’s right, I need to provide an heir! And if anything happens to Anna, if…if any…if…Anna…Anna…”_

_Elsa quickly finished the last stitch and stood, made a move to walk back to her room, when she paused and rubbed her temples, breathing heavily, eyes shut. Wrapping one arm around her middle, she held the blanket out._

_“Mama?”  
“Yes, sweetheart? “  
“Will…will you give this to Anna for me please?”_

_A heartbeat._

_“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to be the one to give it to her? ”_

_She dropped the blanket as the temperature in the room did the same, a sharp contrast to the balmy air outside, hands growing impossibility cold and freezing the corner of the soft cotton._

_Her mother knelt in front of her, covering her Elsa’s hands with the blanket and gently rubbing small circles on them. The gown she had been working on, a beautiful thing she had embroidered with, not flowers, but arches, rolling waves, a gown the color of the sea, of Anna’s eyes, fell._

_Elsa was twenty one when she pinned her mother’s brooch to it._

____________________________________

Braiding the Anna doll’s hair was simpler than the real thing.

_Elsa found Anna sitting on the vanity, her copper hair tangled in what appeared to be every direction. Her baby sister’s hair looked like the first and last time she had ever attempted basket weaving._

_“Now my hair is just like yours!” Anna squealed, tugging at what she must’ve thought was an impressive French braid._

_How Anna had managed to get her short hair in that many tangles, Elsa didn’t know. “Here,” she said, grabbing a brush from the dresser, “let me help”. She ran the brush through her hair, making sure to be gentle with all the tangles, as Anna bounced in her seat. “Elsa, Elsa braid my hair!”_

_Elsa smiled and ruffled her sister’s hair, still soft and fine and just barely touching her shoulders. “Someday”_

How many somedays had she missed? The weeks, months, years following The Frozen Summer had been spent trying to make up for all the lost time. So many late nights were spent sitting on the carpet, full from raiding the kitchens, now braiding each other’s hair and chatting until the first few rays of sunlight started to peek over the fjord.

_Giggling about sneaking around the castle kitchen at midnight turned into making wagers on who could pull the best prank on Kristoff using all the lutefisk they found._

_There was one night that was all hushed whispers under the blanket, Anna whispering that she was “excited, but scared, so scared”. Elsa ran her fingers through her finished work and twisted Anna’s braid into a chignon, practice for tomorrow, and told her that she was “going to make the most beautiful bride, he won’t know what hit him.”_

_More than a decade later, as Elsa, braid undone from all the times she ran her hands through it, sat on the foot of the bed, clutching their mother’s wedding veil like a lifeline, Anna told her the same thing._

_One impromptu sleepover started with Anna shaking Elsa awake, laughing and crying and hugging her before finally whispering just one thing: “Hi Auntie.”_

“I have today”, she thought as she sat on one end of the chaise, braiding Anna’s hair as Anna chattered on about today’s breakfast, and Sven Jr’s antlers coming along nicely, and “oh and can you believe it, I misplaced the dolls again! Anyway Neta probably got her hands on it, speaking of Neta-” Elsa smiled and tied the end of Anna’s hair.

She’ll always have today.  
____________________________________

Making the cape was the hardest.

It took her a while to find fabric for the magenta cape. She asked about Oaken’s whereabouts, in the hopes of finding something similar, but last she heard, he was focusing on his, now expanded, sauna, as she read in her correspondence from him. “Besides, Majesty, that is from our winter stock.”

Anna insisted on keeping the cape she wore on the mountains that night. It was worn now, and frayed and more than just a little faded, but it was as much of a comfort to Anna as Neta’s baby blanket was to the now five year old.

_“Anna, that blanket must be a decade old”  
“More”  
“Are you sure you don’t want to give her something else? I could commission the most beautiful new blanket for her, let me-“  
“Elsa” , Anna said, handing her daughter, swaddled nice and warm, over to her wide eyed aunt. “It’s perfect. Always has been.” _

She attempted to dye some wool herself. “Make it pink. Make it blue.” She muttered as she tried to mix the two dyes together. She huffed, placing the bottles down a little too hard, and decided to come back to it after the meeting with parliament . It was going to be a long night.

When Alarik finally found her in his lab , the candle on his work bench was nearly burned out, flames flickering and reflecting off the glassware, casting a soft glow on her face. She was sprawled on the bench, snoring lightly, some of her hair falling close to her lips.

Two flights of stairs, a no-longer-confused-at-this-point Kai, and a rather heavy door later, Elsa blinked her eyes open at a soft kiss to her forehead.

“Missing something, my darling ?” Alarik whispered, pulling out her wedding band as he finished tucking her in.

“Oops,” Elsa winced. She reached a hand out from under their blanket and tried to take it from him, but he stopped it and slipped the ring gently back on her finger. He smiled.

“Sorry,” she said, turning pink.

“Don’t be.” He was fully grinning now, giving her hand a quick kiss. “If it means I get to do that again, please, take it off again.”

Now she was scarlet, and even after months of marriage, her breath hitched when he began stroking her finger and turning the ring now back where it belonged.

He laughed, pressing another kiss to her ring finger. “I am wondering though, why are there traces of pink and blue dye on the floor of the lab?”

One night, after dinner, Kristoff pulled her aside and put a magenta bonnet in her hand, something she had only seen once, in the ice palace, on a night she’d rather forget,

__

_“You don’t have to protect me, I’m not afraid! Please don’t shut me out again!”_

__

__

__

“I know we can figure this out, together!”

__

__

__

_“I’m not leaving without you Elsa!”_

__

But Elsa saw that it looked the same as it did all those years ago, not a fray or a tear in sight, and she looked up and smiled. Kristoff winked.  
____________________________________

Elsa clutched the dolls in her left hand and raised her right to knock. She stopped.

This is a lovely door. So smooth. Is that mahogany?

“Making bedroom eyes at the door, I see?”

She dropped the dolls.  
“Kristoff! ” she whispered, scrambling for the dolls, gathering them up in her arms. “You’re one to talk, you speak reindeer.”

“But I don’t flirt with them”  
“Shouldn’t you be fixing your daughter’s sled? “  
“Shouldn’t you be giving something to your sister? “

A loud snore from inside the room.

“See, I can’t, she’s napping, I’ll just… here, why don’t you give it, you can just-”  
“Hey, hey. Don’t worry about it,” he straightened the Anna doll’s bonnet, “she’s going to love em.”

He patted Elsa on the shoulder and left to find Neta before that child attempted sawing the wood herself again.

Elsa looked back at the door. Okay. Knock. Tell her she found the dolls. Leave. Okay. Alright. She raised her hand again, knuckles hovering inches over the wood.

And put it down.  
Raised it again.  
Put it down.

Was this how Anna felt? For thirteen years?  
_  
“I never see you anymore”  
“I think some company is overdue ”  
“We only have each other”_

Anna’s going to hate them. Elsa ruined the clothes they’ve had for years and she’s going to hate them. What was she thinking? Anna, good, sweet, wonderful Anna’s the one good at giving presents, at making people smile. Anna gave and gave and gave as easily as breathing.

“And I’m selfish .”

She set the dolls down by the door, making sure to use each doll to support the other.

_knock, knockknockknock_

Elsa scurried off to hide behind a large suit of armor.

Nothing.

_KNOCK, knockknockknock_

The sound of pillows falling off a bed. A squeak. A yawn. Slow shuffling. “Who is it?”

From behind the armor, Elsa saw Anna open the door, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Anna looked left. Right. At the ceiling. Under her shoe.

“Oh, hello there!” Anna squealed, bending down at the sight of her beloved dolls. She held them close to her chest, before holding them out, examining them.

“Lookin good, girls ”

Elsa nearly released the breath she had been holding when Anna turned to her general direction.

“Elsa? I know you’re out there ”

She peeked out from behind the armor, shuffling her feet. “How did you know?”

“Charles is the best one for hiding ” Anna said, pointing at another suit a few feet away.

Biting her lip, Elsa wrung her hands together before Anna spoke up.

“Elsa? ”

She was about to look up from her hands when Anna launched herself at her, a 5 foot 2 ball of laughter, and hugged Elsa so tight she could’ve sworn she was wearing a second corset. Anna thrust her doll in Elsa’s hands.

“Do you wanna play dolls?”

“Only if you play Anna”  
“But I’m ALWAYS Anna!”

Elsa was laughing now, returning her sister’s hug.

“Yes, you are.”


	2. Bonus Mini Chapter

Elsa joined Anna and Neta on the floor by the fireplace, making the dolls sing and dance, a lively little tune, of snowmen and bikes. She clasped her hands together and whispered, “Ready?”

Mother and daughter nodded, eyes wide. Elsa raised her hands and let a light snowfall flutter around the dolls, snowflakes catching on their felt crowns and button eyes.

“This is amazing!” they said, Neta squealing and watching as the snowflakes danced by the dolls, the shimmers reflecting in her round, awestruck eyes.

Anna was looking at the dolls.

Elsa watched her niece make the dolls chase each other and felt familiar arms wrap around her middle, and a head rest on her shoulder, auburn curls tickling her nose

She leaned back and closed her eyes.

“I want one” Alarik murmured to himself, voice nothing more than a whisper

Elsa turned, raised an eyebrow, but she couldn’t hide the upward quirk of her lip.

“A doll? Alarik, you are a grown man, you do not need a doll. Besides,” she turned and kissed his nose “You have me”

He laughed, his grin reaching all the way to his eyes “That, I do, my darling”, he said as he tapped her nose in return “That, I do.”

“Goose.”

She let him bury his face in her hair and turned back to watch her sister and niece play, sighing contentedly in his arms and listening to the gentle thumping of his heart. If she had turned just a little bit later, she might have caught the twinkle in his eye.


End file.
